Women Artists

Pamela Goode Mosaics, Set 2

/ Pam Goode / 7 Comments

Artwork Top to Bottom and Left to Right:

The Wishing Tree: SOLD, 8″ x 8″, Glass, Millefiori on Wedi Board.
Colorado Dawn: AVAILABLE, 7″H and 13″ W, Mexican Smalti, Mexican Smalti Tortillas, Chopped and Divoted.
Mirrored Wall: NOT AVAILABLE, 33″H x 15″W, Hand-Cut Mirror and Colored Mirror; Outdoor Installation for Ciel Gallery (now demolished).
Wasteland: SOLD, 18″ x 18″; Agate, Mirror, Stained Glass, Unglazed Porcelain, Aquarium Gravel, Pewter; This mosaic began with a dream. Because the image is so void-like, I included lines from T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland and The Hollow Men using small pewter beads that crash into the deep. The mirror-backed “void” reflects the viewer. From the center, spirals of poetry and blank human faces form a rough heart shape, balancing the sense of desolation with a touch of hope. From the central abyss, the tesserae become less defined and increasingly chaotic, until in some spots there are no tesserae at all, but only a gouged space remaining.
He Said, She Said: NOT AVAILABLE; 12″ x 7″ Drawing on Paper (created for a future project that didn’t happen).
Sunbather: NFS, 10″H x 10″W by 5″ Deep; Crystal, Beads, Agate, Glass, Shell, Copper on Stone.
Wild Hearts: SOLD, Unglazed Porcelain, Clay, Beads.
Sunflower Table: SOLD, 46″ rectangular mosaic partially shown, Glass.
The Boy with a Moon and Star: SOLD, Glass on Wedi Board.
Late Bloomer: AVAILABLE, 10″H x 36″L x 18″W; Selected by and displayed at the Society of American Mosaics 2010; Glass, Metal, Mineral, Shell, Beads, Carborundum, Wire, Hand-Carved Styrofoam base by me; Through art, I hope to capture and momentarily magnify archetypal awakenings that resonate with the human spirit. I’m drawn to create with mixed materials because I want, above all, to create as full an image as I can manage. Late Bloomer pulls from the miscellanea of life — sometimes messy, sometimes arbitrary, always fascinating, always more cluttered than we had imagined. The pruning and fitting together of disparate materials becomes a way to order my own thoughts, emotions, and priorities, allowing the finished piece to serve as a kind of talisman.

Pamela Goode Mosaics, Set 1

/ Pam Goode / 21 Comments


Hello Lovelies!

Today I’m posting a few of the mosaics I’ve created over the past gazillion years. What a joy it’s been! I’ve taken a break lately due to wrist issues, but I’m slowly making my way back in and loving it. The new pieces will be smaller (grumble), but they’ll still be a joy. They range in size from 8 x 8 inches to about 14 x 20.

Who has a favorite?

Are Old Barbies New Again?

/ Pam Goode / 1 Comment

I once bought a passel of Barbies. Not whole Barbies, mind you, but just the heads. They were for sale on a friend’s website, and though I rarely (never, ever) spend money on dolls, I snatched these up like a woman possessed and gleefully began arranging them. It was a Very Good Day.

Lately I’ve been purging, and although your first thought is surely “OH NO! NOT THE BARBIES!!!!, you’ll be pleased to know that in no way shape form or teeny tiny inkling of a thought did I ever consider turning them over to a new Barbie family. Those barbie heads are mine for life.

Mind you, this large jar shows about 1/3, or a bit less, of the heads.

But OH! Surprise! While cleaning out my (grown) daughter’s closet this morning, I pulled out a box and — you guessed it — Barbies! And not just body-less Barbies this time, but fully grown and totally intact Barbies. (I may amend this statement when I more carefully examine my haul).

Interestingly, only one of the “intact” barbies is naked, and yes, it’s Ken. I’m uncertain whether he’s showing off his manliness or or was stripped to the bones by the entire box of girls. I figure it’s a tossup.

Oops, two more have stripped. It’s a party!

I guess it’s about time to watch the movie. Sometimes the oddity IS the story.

Bad People

/ Pam Goode / 28 Comments

Yesterday I had my purse stolen. I was in a quiet corner of a public place that I visit daily for writing sessions. Everyone is always, always quietly respectful and attentive to their own work. We recognize each other though, for the most part, smile at the children who come in, and our eyes glitter at the parents. It’s a happy place. A safe place. A place largely inhabited by kind, quiet souls who create — some for a living, and others because it’s simply what we do.

What we don’t do is steal.

Every day I spend a few hours writing. It’s hard to write at home — too many chores starting me in the face — so I trek daily to my favorite bookstore, grab a chair, fall immediately into my zone, and have at it. It’s a beautiful part of my day — silence, creativity, kindred spirits, and a lovely unspoken support for each other.

I’m not going to say that yesterday changed things, because I won’t allow that. It will take me a few days though. I’m mad. Hurt. But trucking along, or attempting to.

Yesterday was a very quiet day — only a few tables taken, and I sat in my usual spot, wedged my bag and my computer bag between the table and the short wall, turned my chair at a slight angle, pulled out my laptop, and started writing. I was aware of a guy sitting close behind me — he was a bit gangly and wore all gray. I had my head in my work, as did the others around me. Well, mostly.

I started a post about Ireland. When I finished a quick first draft, I reached for my bag so I could grab an afternoon snack. The bag was now under my chair rather than against the wall and beneath bag two, as I had left it. I pulled it out, looked through it several times, and realized that my purse was indeed missing. This guy was smooth.

It’s been 22 years since my purse was last stolen, Twenty-two years since our house was robbed. You begin to trust. Again. I spent the rest of the day closing accounts with my husband. I think we shut him down (along with his several $2200 Nordstrom purchases and a $775 drugstore purchase), so hopefully there’s not much of a financial loss.

The loss, of course, is trust.

I’m going to try my level damn best to hold on to it.

Please Don’t Shoot Me

/ Pam Goode / 3 Comments

I’ve always loathed being on the lens end of a camera. Maybe that pre-teen awkwardness was something I never grew out of, or maybe I just hated having people stare at me, even for the two seconds it took to focus and push the button. But mostly, I think, it’s that I can’t find the Me in photographs. Shortish with dark hair and a penchant for bare feet, self recognition seemed to end there. Whose face is that? Are her dreams my dreams? Why doesn’t she smile? There’s a disconnect there and I don’t know how to piece it together. I suppose I just don’t want to be noticed, sometimes even by myself. I do wonder if I write to leave bits of me here and there — a picture in scribbled words where there are no images.

I’m not the only one. My mom hated having her picture taken, and solved the issue by grimacing or sticking her tongue out for every click of the camera. It was a pretty effective way to erase the possibility that maybe this was her real face, or worse, her real soul, being shown. Me, I just duck and turn my focus elsewhere.

I don’t know why. I think it started as shyness and morphed into reticence over the vast array of personalities out there, particularly in the early school years. How anyone gets through them is a mystery.

Of course the older I get, the less often someone asks for a photo, and that’s okay with me. As the decades have floated by and I’ve had to learn (or fake) adult interaction, it’s gotten easier — but I’ve also learned to turn off interaction when necessary. Life is filled with a zillion different kinds of people; the wise ones know this and celebrate diversity with careful choices. And on the days when all the crazies are out, there’s always the choice of an innocuous mask. Or a donkey. Donkeys are great attention grabbers, and they never, ever ask to take pictures of you.

Lost and Found: Moments in Time

/ Pam Goode / 7 Comments
Portrait of the French novelist Marcel Proust. 1890s (Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images)

You know how when you’re gone for a time, and possibly only for a week, and still you come home to the place you’ve known forever but then for a moment, that brief flash, you can’t immediately locate even the possessions that you use most often and that have been been kept in the same place for years (!!!)?

At first it’s a little disorienting and maybe fleetingly irritating, but in the end, isn’t it really pretty cool to know that only a few days of new input can shift your view, your rote, your same-old so quickly and so completely as to momentarily obliterate even what you know best?

It all comes back of course. But suppose we make the conscious decision not to rush back to what we know, but instead to embrace the shake-up and simply reinvent, quite spontaneously? I’m not talking drastic life changes, but where’s the harm in trying on a new hat now and then?

I’m quick to claim that I’m very much my own person — who I am is who I am, and re-invention seems — well, why? But the truth is that, like most of us, I’ve reinvented many, many times — often quite spontaneously and totally without prior consideration. Each time it was a seamless transition to a place I was meant to be.

I found a good hearing aid and started having conversations. With people. A lot. I was 49, and after 49 years of smiling and trying to fit into various boxes, I was suddenly and rather effortlessly a part of the world.  I walked past a trashed little space on a good street with a “for rent” sign and immediately knew it was waiting for me to reinvent as an art studio. I had no experience setting up or running an art studio, but it worked and I did it with joy for 13 years. On a whim. I just knew.

We all know. We don’t all act.

Marcel Proust (otherwise known as Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust) wrote a monumental seven volume novel over a period of 14 years with the distinction of having written the longest novel in the world. If you’re wondering, it’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time), filled with a whopping 1,267,069 words and twice as robust as War and Peace. But maybe that’s to be expected in a man with six flowery names, the first of which is Valentin. Considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, I’m not about to question his judgement.

But I wonder … did he plan this abrupt life alteration, or did it just appear to him and he grabbed it?

I’m beginning to believe that the life we meticulously plan is rarely our true life. I’m beginning to believe that we don’t give ourselves enough credit — we don’t aspire past what we consider our limits; we don’t reach as far as our arms were meant to. We barely know ourselves.

So take the trip, physically or metaphorically but preferably alone, and see where it leads you. Pretty sure you’ll be surprised. And you’ll be home. (Maybe in Paris)

 

 
 
 
 

Patricia Helsing, Missed

/ Pam Goode / 1 Comment

Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Bean

Here’s to an artist whose wit and vision ran circles around my own, always nudging me to aim a little higher, Patricia Helsing. To see more of her work, look here, and nudge your own self a bit today.